AMERICAN VITALITY 73 



Why, in 1858, J. Powers rode one hundred and fifty miles 

 in six hours and forty-three minutes in San Francisco ; 

 in 1868, N. H. Mowry rode, on the San Francisco race- 

 track, in the sight of gathered thousands, three hundred 

 miles in fourteen hours, nine minutes ; and one Anderson, 

 in the same city, rode one thousand three hundred and 

 four miles in ninety hours. The fact that these men fre- 

 quently changed horses only adds to the splendid charac- 

 ter of the feat, so far as the man is concerned. But this 

 is not all there is to the Berlin- Vienna ride. 



Many years ago Dr. Brown-Sequard, in a lecture to a 

 Harvard class, was illustrating how instantaneously death 

 followed any lesion to brain tissue or spinal marrow. " I 

 insert my probe between the vertebrae of this rabbit," said 

 he, taking up a specimen which was nibbling at a cabbage 

 on the table before him, " and you see that it at once ex- 

 pires." The doctor's remark was, to his surprise, followed 

 by a general titter throughout the class, for, though he 

 had duly suited his action to his words, when he laid it 

 down the rabbit went as calmly at the cabbage again as 

 if not in the slightest degree inconvenienced. This singu- 

 lar fact and other similar ones which he later noticed 

 here, but had never observed among European animals, 

 led Dr. Brown-Sequard, after careful tests, to enunciate 

 the theory that the mammal of North America has more 

 vitality than that of Europe. This theory is supported 

 by man}^ facts, and was fairly proven sound by the nu- 

 merous cases of recovery from extraordinary capital oper- 

 ations during our Civil War, when the antiseptic method 

 was unknown. It has now been accepted by all who have 

 studied the subject. The word " vitality," thus used, we 

 understand to mean the ability to perform exceptional 

 physical feats, or to endure excessive hardship without 

 death or material injury. 



